Save a ggplot (or other grid object) with sensible defaults

Source: R/save.r

ggsave() is a convenient function for saving a plot. It defaults to saving the last plot that you displayed, using the size of the current graphics device. It also guesses the type of graphics device from the extension.

ggsave(filename, plot = last_plot(), device = NULL, path = NULL,
  scale = 1, width = NA, height = NA, units = c("in", "cm", "mm"),
  dpi = 300, limitsize = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

filename

File name to create on disk.
plot

Plot to save, defaults to last plot displayed.
device

Device to use. Can either be a device function (e.g. png()), or one of "eps", "ps", "tex" (pictex), "pdf", "jpeg", "tiff", "png", "bmp", "svg" or "wmf" (windows only).
path

Path to save plot to (combined with filename).
scale

Multiplicative scaling factor.
width, height, units

Plot size in units ("in", "cm", or "mm"). If not supplied, uses the size of current graphics device.
dpi

Plot resolution. Also accepts a string input: "retina" (320), "print" (300), or "screen" (72). Applies only to raster output types.
limitsize

When TRUE (the default), ggsave will not save images larger than 50x50 inches, to prevent the common error of specifying dimensions in pixels.
...

Other arguments passed on to the graphics device function, as specified by device.

Details

Note: Filenames with page numbers can be generated by including a C integer format expression, such as %03d (as in the default file name for most R graphics devices, see e.g. png()). Thus, filename = "figure%03d.png" will produce successive filenames figure001.png, figure002.png, figure003.png, etc. To write a filename containing the % sign, use %%. For example, filename = "figure-100%%.png" will produce the filename figure-100%.png.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt)) + geom_point()

ggsave("mtcars.pdf")
ggsave("mtcars.png")

ggsave("mtcars.pdf", width = 4, height = 4)
ggsave("mtcars.pdf", width = 20, height = 20, units = "cm")

# delete files with base::unlink()
unlink("mtcars.pdf")
unlink("mtcars.png")

# specify device when saving to a file with unknown extension
# (for example a server supplied temporary file)
file <- tempfile()
ggsave(file, device = "pdf")
unlink(file)
}